Kraft Visionaries Push the Limits Of What We Call “Food”

By Mia Feldman

“If you think about it, what is food really?” pondered senior Kraft Foods chef and chemical engineer, John Galliard. “Traditionally the answer has been meats, fruits, vegetables, grains and dairy products. But we at Kraft are working hard to push past these limitations and to open people’s minds to new ideas of what’s edible and what isn’t.”

Galliard, a self-described “food visionary,” developed his passion at an early age. “Growing up my mother always told me ‘Johnny don’t eat anything you find behind the couch. You’ll get sick.’ So I just had it in my mind anything from behind the couch was outside this so called sphere-of-edibility. Until one day, when I worked up the courage taste this raisin I found between two cushions. I was nervous to eat it but then I was fine. That really got the gears in my head spinning. If people can eat raisins from behind the couch what else can we eat? Yogurt from a tube? Fruit-punch flavored oreos? Cool-Whip frosting? Anything can be edible if you dare to dream.”

Galliard and his team don’t like labels. “Studies have found that if you show people an apple and a beaker of high fructose corn syrup or aspertame and say ‘point to the food’ they’ll typically point to the apple. But why has our society labeled one a food and not the other? Our goal at Kraft is to get people out of their culinary comfort zones. When making food choices we want people to step outside of the realm of what we’ve been eating for centuries.”

Despite some amount of controversy from health freaks and quinoa enthusiasts, Galliard is extremely proud of the work he does. He pointed out that before the 20th century young children whose parents were too lazy to feed them typically died. “Thanks to our work at Kraft these children are able to subsist on a diet of lunchables, happymeals and cheesesticks,” he said proudly. “Thanks to our culinary ingenuity sometimes they’re even able to make it to the age of 45.”